Not a prophecy, just a prediction
Trials and difficulties will come upon Western Christianity, all its denominations, as we lose our former status as the cultural religion. One need not be a prophet to see that; it is beginning already.
The demise of many denominations is ahead. Those that compromise with a world that hates the gospel will of course fade into the oblivion of irrelevance. If your preaching adjusts to the times and the culture too much, you find you are saying nothing that people need to go into the church to hear, for your preaching is the same platitudinous pablum they can hear outside the church.
True Christian believers of various denominational backgrounds will begin to see one another as more alike than different. Shared trials and difficulties tend to do that--to draw people together.
Since our denominations have proven to have clay feet, we can step back from our history of strife and controversy to say that their disputes over theological minutiae did not profit any of them--for all alike fell into worldliness and irrelevance. It matters little how insightful your theology if it is not undergirded by basic goodness and faithfulness in the heart. If the heart is not right the mind's cleverness is moot.
We shall then see what was in plain sight all along, salvation is not a matter of which church you belong to or how slick your theological arguments are, but personal. The Lord Jesus said that whoever heard his words and believed God who sent him had already passed from death to life. That speaks of a personal recognition that yes, this Jesus is telling me the truth, is who he claims, and answers the questions that really matter.
It may be accurate to say that service leading to sanctification is a corporate matter, involving the church as the venue of the different gifts bestowed among us, which God intends for us to use in concert with one another. Salvation, though, pivots on "Who do you say that I am?" Note that those who will be rejected at the end of the world will be told "I never knew you," not that you belonged to the wrong church, or held the wrong theological slant.
In the gospel, Jesus tells us how to find and affirm him and also how it is that people miss knowing him and finding his salvation. Though I would never dismiss the importance of corporate Christianity in the form of the historical church, believers logically precede the church because they come together to form the church. You have to have believers to start with. Where you don't have believers but hypocrites instead, churches fall apart. The presence of true believers is the sine qua non of the Christian congregation.
So there we shall stand, the remaining believers, as Christian society and the failed churches fall apart around us, true believers from a variety of traditions with our horses shot from under us, so to speak--our denominations ruined by hypocrisy and worldly compromise. We will, though, see our spiritual kinship with one another, as the remnant of believers, feel it, in the one Spirit that calls and inwardly forms us.
Christ's commandment that we love one another will take its rightful place as the head of the list of Christian priorities, rather than being treated as a footnote. Drawn together by shared trouble, we will see one another as spiritual siblings rather than rival factions. It is the obvious place to turn when our separated churches and their sectarian religious formulas lose spiritual relevance--to turn to each other. Then we can begin to rebuild as one church, on the basis Christ desired for us and which he said would bring visible unity: The world will know God had sent him, and that we are his disciples, when we selflessly love one another.
It really is the capstone of Christian experience, in this world at least, when people approximate with one another the oneness between Christ and the Father. There are many spiritual gifts and wonders in the kingdom, but the greatest of these is love.
In our many trials and difficulties, we will learn to put first things first, and these are the first things, that we love God and one another. When we do that, it will become far easier to see what we do not now see, how to rebuild Western Christianity to be something better than it was before. God shall work the present cultural disaster to good in the cause of Christian unity.
The demise of many denominations is ahead. Those that compromise with a world that hates the gospel will of course fade into the oblivion of irrelevance. If your preaching adjusts to the times and the culture too much, you find you are saying nothing that people need to go into the church to hear, for your preaching is the same platitudinous pablum they can hear outside the church.
True Christian believers of various denominational backgrounds will begin to see one another as more alike than different. Shared trials and difficulties tend to do that--to draw people together.
Since our denominations have proven to have clay feet, we can step back from our history of strife and controversy to say that their disputes over theological minutiae did not profit any of them--for all alike fell into worldliness and irrelevance. It matters little how insightful your theology if it is not undergirded by basic goodness and faithfulness in the heart. If the heart is not right the mind's cleverness is moot.
We shall then see what was in plain sight all along, salvation is not a matter of which church you belong to or how slick your theological arguments are, but personal. The Lord Jesus said that whoever heard his words and believed God who sent him had already passed from death to life. That speaks of a personal recognition that yes, this Jesus is telling me the truth, is who he claims, and answers the questions that really matter.
It may be accurate to say that service leading to sanctification is a corporate matter, involving the church as the venue of the different gifts bestowed among us, which God intends for us to use in concert with one another. Salvation, though, pivots on "Who do you say that I am?" Note that those who will be rejected at the end of the world will be told "I never knew you," not that you belonged to the wrong church, or held the wrong theological slant.
In the gospel, Jesus tells us how to find and affirm him and also how it is that people miss knowing him and finding his salvation. Though I would never dismiss the importance of corporate Christianity in the form of the historical church, believers logically precede the church because they come together to form the church. You have to have believers to start with. Where you don't have believers but hypocrites instead, churches fall apart. The presence of true believers is the sine qua non of the Christian congregation.
So there we shall stand, the remaining believers, as Christian society and the failed churches fall apart around us, true believers from a variety of traditions with our horses shot from under us, so to speak--our denominations ruined by hypocrisy and worldly compromise. We will, though, see our spiritual kinship with one another, as the remnant of believers, feel it, in the one Spirit that calls and inwardly forms us.
Christ's commandment that we love one another will take its rightful place as the head of the list of Christian priorities, rather than being treated as a footnote. Drawn together by shared trouble, we will see one another as spiritual siblings rather than rival factions. It is the obvious place to turn when our separated churches and their sectarian religious formulas lose spiritual relevance--to turn to each other. Then we can begin to rebuild as one church, on the basis Christ desired for us and which he said would bring visible unity: The world will know God had sent him, and that we are his disciples, when we selflessly love one another.
It really is the capstone of Christian experience, in this world at least, when people approximate with one another the oneness between Christ and the Father. There are many spiritual gifts and wonders in the kingdom, but the greatest of these is love.
In our many trials and difficulties, we will learn to put first things first, and these are the first things, that we love God and one another. When we do that, it will become far easier to see what we do not now see, how to rebuild Western Christianity to be something better than it was before. God shall work the present cultural disaster to good in the cause of Christian unity.
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